Sunday, June 21, 2015

New movie review: Love & Mercy

Brian Wilson is a genius. Full stop. As the primary creative
force behind The Beach Boys, he is responsible for crafting some of the catchiest
pop melodies this side of The Beatles, and his complex musical and vocal arrangements
have been and will be studied by musicians and critics for decades. His
contributions to popular music are innumerable, and his influence is as
widespread as it is singular. There is no one like him.

It is also indisputable that he has lived a hard life. Every
step of the way, he was harassed, abused, and exploited by those around him.
His petty, vindictive father terrorized him his whole life. He succumbed to drugs,
alcohol abuse, and mental illness. He famously spent three years lying in bed,
haunted by the voices in his head and the demons in his thoughts. His greatest
gift is also his curse, and though the creative spirit he embodies has been
battered and bruised by the world around him, it has not been broken.

The story of Wilson’s life is by turns haunting, surreal,
sad, and triumphant and deserves a film of equal depth and complexity. That
film is director-producer Bill Pohlad’s tender, beautiful Love & Mercy. Pohlad has spent most of his career as a
producer, helping shepherd to the screen films such as 12 Years a Slave, The Tree of
Life, and Brokeback Mountain.
Here, he takes over the director’s chair for the first time in 25 years, and
the results are stunning.

Working from a screenplay by Oren Moverman and Michael A.
Lerner, Pohlad portrays Wilson’s life as a gorgeous, elliptical tone poem about
the confused and hyperactive mind of a brilliant artist. Pohlad avoids the
pitfalls of most by-the-numbers music biopics by not focusing on dry biography –
though the film is impeccably researched and detailed – and instead presenting
events as Wilson would have experienced and interpreted them.

John Cuscak and Elizabeth Banks in Love & Mercy.

The film is split into two parts given roughly equal weight.
Paul Dano plays a younger Wilson shown struggling to take the band and its
music in new directions with the recording of the now-legendary Pet Sounds. John Cusack plays Wilson two
decades later, after his “bed” period and while under the control of psychiatrist
Eugene Landy (Paul Giamatti). During this time, he meets Melinda Ledbetter
(Elizabeth Banks), who tries to help him break free of Landy’s influence.

All of the performances are superb, and Banks in particular
is a revelation. Known almost exclusively for her comedic roles, though some
audiences will no doubt recognize her best as Effie Trinket from the Hunger Games films, Banks plumbs depths
of emotional resolve and compassion that she has rarely been able to showcase. She
more than rises to the challenge, exerting herself as the conscience of the
film as Ledbetter is the only person we meet who sees Wilson for the man he is
behind the myth.

Giamatti turns in typically excellent work as Landy, whose
purposeful misdiagnosis allows him to take guardianship of Wilson and bend and
manipulate him to his will with a cocktail of medications and psychological
abuse. In an older but not-yet-wise Wilson, Cusack gets a role befitting his
immense talent. Through all his lies and fabrications, Landy says one true
thing – that Wilson is a boy in a man’s body – and Cusack’s subtle, introverted
work perfectly captures that truth.

This half of the movie comprises a more traditional
narrative, which is strong, if a bit clichéd and propped up by its wonderful
actors. The sequences with younger Wilson, identified in the credits as “Past
Brian,” are another matter altogether. In showing the process of creation,
Pohlad mixes film stocks, plays tricks with the soundscape, and shuffles our
perception of time to put the audience directly in the mind of a musician
having an artistic and spiritual breakthrough.

Though the supporting performances are strong, Dano is like
a one-man show through this section of the film. An actor who has showed
immense promise in films as diverse as Little
Miss Sunshine and There Will Be Blood,
here, he realizes the full potential of his talents. Wilson cannot escape his
past as every element of his life conspires to drag him back to a place of pain
and misery. Dano embodies this man who wants so badly to please others and
express himself artistically but keeps finding these two endeavors to be
contradictory. Making full use of his face, voice, and mannerisms, Dano brings
to life someone who is simultaneously breaking through and breaking down.

In service of all these wonderful performances, Pohlad
provides an immaculately crafted world for his actors to explore and for his to
take root. It is hard to think of a recent film that has used sound so well and
in so many different ways. From the complete lack of artifice in Wilson’s
hammering out of a rough version of “God Only Knows” to the sonic collage of
past Beach Boys hits – provided by frequent Trent Reznor collaborator and Oscar
winner Atticus Ross – Pohlad creates a universe of sound that is rarely
pleasant but always emotionally resonant. This, we can infer, is what it sounds
like to be Wilson.

The portrait of Wilson in Love & Mercy is that of neither saint nor sinner. He has done
wrong and been wronged. For every triumph, he has been exposed to a trial. While
the people in his life have hurt him, he has endured and persevered with help
of others. His successes have not inured him to the difficulties of life. He is
a genius whose struggles have humbled him. He does not ask for pity or praise.
All he needs is a little – well, it’s right there in the title.

2 comments:

I think the idea was that Cusack could bring a certain world-weariness to the role that Dano does not have, but I would have been intrigued to see a version in which they aged Dano up to play the older Wilson as well.